The AIDS Epidemic Was Born 35 Years Ago Today

"Intensive care units at UCLA and across the country began to fill with young gay men requiring ventilators, their lungs choked with the same strange organism."

From: NewNowNext

 On June 5, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) describing a rare lung infection, Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), in five young gay men living in Los Angeles. The Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times picked up the story that same day.

It was the first report diagnosing what was soon to be known as Acquired Immunity Deficiency Syndrome—AIDS.

 “Within days of the June 5 report, doctors began telephoning from all over the nation to tell me about their own patients with pneumocystis,” wrote Dr. Michael Gottlieb, who identified AIDS in that report.

“Over time, intensive care units at UCLA and across the country began to fill with young gay men requiring ventilators, their lungs choked with the same strange organism. The AIDS epidemic was underway.”

 Of course, we’ve since learned that HIV arrived in the U.S. in the late 1970s—and an HIV-positive blood sample was discovered that dates back to 1959. But if you’re going to give the AIDS epidemic a birthday, today would be it.

Forgive us if we didn’t get a present.

It’s been 35 years since those first cases were diagnosed, and so much has changed. For a communicable disease to go from death sentence to having medication that can give patients a normal lifespan in a matter of decades is unheard of. Typhoid, tuberculosis, syphilis took centuries—millennia in some cases—to successfully address.

And yet it can still feel like we’re making little headway against HIV.

But we are making great strides: